John Lewis still has the scar on his head from the police club that fractured his skull 50 years ago as he tried to march across a bridge in Alabama. Half a century on, the Oscar-nominated film Selma has re-created a defining moment of the era, when police used horses, tear gas and clubs against a

President Obama risked the wrath of China yesterday with a heartfelt public appreciation of the Dalai Lama. He greeted the exiled Tibetan leader as a “good friend” and likened him to Pope Francis as an inspirational global figure. Speaking at the National Prayer Breakfast, a fixture on the

The only terrorist convicted of involvement in plotting the 9/11 attacks on America has accused the Saudi royal family of funding al-Qaeda in evidence given from his jail cell. Zacarias Moussaoui, the so-called 20th hijacker, claimed that he discussed with a member of the Saudi embassy in

Jeb Bush accused President Obama of leaving many Americans “on the edge of economic ruin” yesterday in his first big speech on the long road to the 2016 election. The former governor of Florida chose an event in Detroit, America’s most blighted city, to start creating a message of hope for

The United States and Iran are reported to be close to a breakthrough in the talks aimed at preventing Tehran from developing nuclear weapons. However, the hint of an agreement, which could allow Iran to keep thousands of centrifuges used to enrich uranium, is likely to provoke anger in the US

The war in eastern Ukraine threatened to escalate into an international conflict yesterday as the US considered supplying weapons to Kiev and the combatants prepared to send thousands of extra troops into battle. After President Poroshenko of Ukraine signed mobilisation orders for 50,000 more

President Obama urged Republicans in Congress yesterday to work with him to increase defence spending and give millions of ordinary families a better deal as he set out a budget for “remaking America”. Many of the plans in the $4 trillion budget have no chance of surviving in the

Greece’s finance minister has insisted that Athens expects the European Central Bank to maintain a funding lifeline while the week-old Syriza government negotiates new bailout terms. Speaking at a press conference with Michel Sapin, his French counterpart, Yanis Varoufakis said: “It’s not that we

The native people of Alaska call it the Sacred Place Where Life Begins; the farthest-flung stretch of coastline in the United States. Yet this remote region, home to the polar bear, walrus and six species of whale, has become the latest battleground in the power struggle between the White House

A knife fight at the age of 14 might have been enough to bring an abrupt halt to any notion that a skinny kid called Ben Carson would go on to achieve greatness. Brought up by a single mother in 1960s Detroit, he was a boy with a mean temper and one day, in the year of Motown’s Tracks of My Tears